Congress Impeached Trump, They Can Certainly Impeach Biden
/“Impeachment ought to be rare,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told The New York Times. “This is not good for the country.”
To be fair, McConnell warned of an impeachment climate back when Donald J. Trump was president. “I said two years ago, when we had not one but two impeachments, that once we go down this path it incentivizes the other side to do the same.”
But President Trump was impeached…twice. Though we shouldn’t get into a habit of impeaching every president the House of Representatives doesn’t like, we shouldn’t stop impeachments if there’s merit to it. The problem with not impeaching Biden is that Trump was impeached for things Biden appeared to have done himself. Plus, there are more serious allegations at hand.
President Donald Trump was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. For the abuse of power, Trump engaged in a not-so-perfect phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, inquiring about an election interference theory involving Crowdstrike and the firing of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it…it sounds horrible to me.”
Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company. In the past, Hunter Biden admitted he wouldn’t be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, and his former business partner, Devon Archer, recently admitted the Biden name “intimidated” people “legally,” and that’s why the company was able to stay in business for so long.
In 2015, Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky and board advisor Vadym Pozharskyi asked Hunter Biden for help from D.C. while they were under investigation by Shokin. 5 days after that meeting, Joe Biden was in Ukraine. A few months later, Shokin was fired.
In 2018, Joe Biden bragged about withholding a billion-dollar loan guarantee from Ukraine unless Viktor Shokin was fired. Now, it could be a complete coincidence that Biden demanded the man investigating the company tied to his son be fired, but you’d understand why Trump was at least suspicious about it.
Now, Zelensky wasn’t aware that President Trump considered withholding $391 million in taxpayer funds allocated for military spending, and he did release the funds. Zelensky also denied that he was blackmailed by Trump. The Democrats interpreted Trump’s phone call as a quid pro quo. Trump claimed he had concerns about Europe not doing their fair share (which he often complains about) and overall corruption.
President Trump released the transcript of his phone call. Since there was no smoking gun of quid pro quo, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff made up a dramatized and damning account of Trump’s conversation. “Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown.” He went on to claim that Trump requested Zelensky to “make up dirt” about Joe Biden. When Schiff was confronted, he claimed his retelling was a parody.
The real sin committed by Trump, according to the media and the Democrats, was using his political power to go after a political rival, regardless of whether or not Trump’s concerns about Biden were warranted.
Neal K. Katyal, who was acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, even wrote in The New York Times that Trump didn’t need to commit a crime to be kicked out of office. “But the potential criminality of the president’s conduct is not the full picture. Our founders deliberately drafted the Constitution’s impeachment clause to ensure the potential grounds for impeachment would cover more than criminal activity.” Katyal argued that Trump was ruining our trust in democracy and that Americans couldn’t trust that our elections would be free from foreign interference. He also claimed Trump had opened himself up to blackmail.
But Democrats did hurt the public perceptions about elections by pushing that Trump colluded with Russia. Biden also claimed on the 2020 debate stage that his son’s laptop (that he must have known was legit) was Russian propaganda. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who was an advisor at the time of the campaign, allegedly helped to get 50 intelligence agents to commit to dismissing the laptop. Joe Biden purposely blamed a foreign nuclear power for election interference, knowing it wasn’t true. That’s no small thing.
Biden’s financial entanglements with his son also leave him open for potential blackmail. The Democrats will be unsatisfied unless there is a direct payment of millions of dollars into Biden’s bank account with a memo that says, “This is for the bribe.” I doubt we’ll ever find such a thing. But we do have a not-so-perfect text from his son, Hunter. “I hope you all can do what I do and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” he texted his daughter, Naomi, in January 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop, I won’t make you give up half your salary.”
Hunter Biden also sent a threatening text to a Chinese businessman, stating his father was right next to him, and there’s good evidence to suggest he was telling the truth. Joe Biden used to claim he didn’t talk to his son about his business dealings. Then, the White House shifted the goalpost to Joe not being in business with his son. But not only did Biden talk to Hunter about his business dealings; he also talked to his business partners repeatedly. As of now, Democrats want us to believe they only talked about the weather and the president never profited from his son’s business deals.
But we know that’s not true, and it’s silly to believe Biden hasn’t benefited from over $20 million from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
As far as going after a political rival, Trump is currently facing two federal indictments. Perhaps the endgame is to see Trump in jail. Perhaps the endgame is to suck up his time, money, and media attention, so Republicans can’t run a good campaign, and Biden will be reelected to the White House, despite his own shady business dealings and job performance. It’s a much better plan than asking Zelensky to look into a thing that we all saw Biden brag about on tape.
We should have zero confidence that Biden’s DOJ is just prosecuting everyone equally under the law, especially after Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal with hush-hush immunity for his tax and gun crimes, and failure to register as a foreign agent. Though the deal blew up after the judge caught onto the ridiculousness of it, the attempt to let the president’s son off is blatantly obvious. Attorney General Merrick Garland did recently appoint David Weiss to be a special council in the case, but Weiss is the person who presided over the sweetheart plea agreement. If anything, it looks as though Weiss was appointed to shield him from testifying in front of Congress about the case.
If and when the House begins issuing subpoenas to Biden, his family, and perhaps other people in his executive branch and they refuse, will Democrats agree with impeaching Biden with “obstruction of Congress?” Even if Weiss shows up to testify about his handling of Hunter’s case, every answer could easily be, “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
If you are a Democrat who voted for impeachment back in 2019, what reason do you have not to impeach Biden now, other than the fact that he’s your guy? It’s not good to continuously impeach presidents, but it’s also not good to have a separate set of rules for one political party. The Constitution clearly states bribery is worthy of impeachment.
In 2019, three lawyers from Protect Democracy argued the Founders idea of bribery was broader than the criminal code. “Their understanding was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest.”
Was Hunter Biden using his father’s name and influence for public or private benefit? When Hunter flew with his dad on Air Force Two to conduct business deals, was that in the public or private interest?
I agree with McConnell that back-to-back impeachments aren’t good for the country, but neither is having a president who rises to the occasion of impeachment. It’s also not good that it looks as though Trump was truly impeached for poking a very credible bear when it comes to Biden’s shady business dealings. Democrats proudly impeached him anyhow. Based on their reasoning for Trump’s first impeachment, Biden meets that threshold.
